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Recognise racial slurs as hate crime, says new petition after Angel Chakma’s death
The petition was filed by a lawyer on Sunday against the backdrop of the death of a 24-year-old student from Tripura Angel Chakma in Dehradun.
NEW DELHI: A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking judicial intervention to recognise the use of “racial slurs” as a distinct category of hate crime.
The petition was filed by lawyer Anoop Prakash Awasthi on Sunday against the backdrop of the death of a 24-year-old student from Tripura in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun.
Angel Chakma from Nandannagar in West Tripura was attacked by a group of six people when he allegedly objected to an alleged racial slur on December 9 in Dehradun. He succumbed to his injuries while undergoing treatment on December 26. The state police have, however, claimed that the attack on Angel Chakma was not racially motivated.
Awasthi’s petition also sought directions to states to set up state-level dedicated bodies for reporting racial crimes and specialised police units in each district or metropolitan area to investigate such offences.
It is not clear when the petition will be heard by the top court.
The petition argued that Chakma’s death was not an isolated case, and pointed to a “long-standing pattern of racial violence” against citizens from the north-eastern states. It cited the 2014 killing of Arunachal Pradesh student Nido Tania in Delhi and noted that the routine use of slurs such as “Chinese” or “chinky” led to social exclusion, psychological trauma and, in extreme cases, fatal violence.
The petition argued that the top court could intervene because there was a legislative vacuum in this respect, as neither the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita nor the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita recognised hate or racial crimes, resulting in the absence of specialised investigation and victim-protection mechanisms.
Invoking the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, the petition sought binding guidelines to recognise racially motivated violence as a distinct constitutional wrong.
A pending petition concerning the safety and dignity of persons from the northeastern states is scheduled for hearing on January 13.
